The present application relates to electronic circuit boards and, more particularly, to a novel method for fabricating a printed circuit board of a desired shape.
Known methods for batch-fabricating printed circuit boards tend to work best on a flat substrate. Most printed circuit fabrication devices, such as screen printers, automatic part insertion machines, wave soldering machines and drying and baking ovens can normally only be utilized with flat-substrate printed circuit boards. However, the printed circuit board must often have a desired shape which is other than flat and most conventional techniques for fabricating printed circuit boards do not allow for the board to be formed after the circuit has been fabricated and parts mounted thereon. For example, conventional glass-epoxy or phenolic printed circuit boards cannot be bent to any great degree without cracking and will not hold a bent shape even if bent by only a small amount. Similar substrates, such as porcelain-coated steel or alumina are essentially completely rigid and will break if bent to any degree. While there are techniques for fabricating flexible circuits utilizing plastic substrate sheet material, the resulting flexible substrates do not have sufficient rigidity to hold a particular form and a second substrate member must usually be provided to maintain the shape of the flexible circuits.
It is therefore desirable to provide a printed circuit board upon which conductor patterns and electronic components can be mounted while the board is in a flat shape and allowing subsequent bending of the substrate to achieve a desired shape, without substrate, conductor or component damage.